Month: February 2024
01MAR2024 – Quote of the Day
A man who lives everywhere lives nowhere.
Martial
Guest Contributor – TomD – 28FEB2024 – Gun Hobby Stuff (Updated 29/FEB)
A picture of pistol extremes. Guess which is more often concealed carried.
The large pistol allows barrels of various calibers to be easily swapped. I’ve got five barrels for this from .357 Mag pistol to 30-30 Winchester. There are 45-70 barrels available but not for me. Those recoil so hard that I’ve seen them rip out of the hands of the shooter and almost literally brain him.
Or here is a target rifle chambered in 6.5 Grendel. This rifle is optimized at up to 600 yards. I’ve got other bolt action rifles that work up past 1000 yards. I used to compete regularly.
Or, for someone looking for a little more Omph, here’s a twin 40MM WWII era Borfors. By acclaim, the most effective anti-aircraft weapon of the entire war, all sides. The Germans, Brits and probably Italians also used it extensively. Examples are still in active duty in AC 130 gunships. Not bad for a 1930 design.
On the other end of the spectrum, here my all-time favorite .22 pistol, and I’ve own or owned an number. This is the target version, has an adjustable trigger and NEVER fails to feed. I’ve had this one for at least 25 years. That’s a red dot sight.
It is nice living in states that allow such hobbies as this.
WAR PIG
As an older sniper I preferred the 300 WinMag. I am also prejudiced in favor of the good, old, 45ACP, M1911A1. The .50 sniper rifles are ok but too darned heavy. As for a backup I preferred the Walther PPK in 380 ACP with an external thread suppressor. For up close, the KA BAR or Applegate-Fairbairn.
I know a guy who has a D20 Soviet 152mm howitzer. Still works but pricey to shoot.
TOM D (in reply to War Pig)
There are some newer rounds common today that are more accurate and much better ballistic coefficients than the old Win Mag, but a lot of them lack the punch. I like the 338 Lapua.
I was Marine, but with the Air Wing, not in the muck with you guys.
Here’s one of my .45’s, from S&W Custom. There are differences, principally the extractor.
What Do We Keep and What Let Go? – Part 3 – Gullibility
The first two installments were about things we must keep. Let’s look at something that has to go. One word for it might be idealism. For lack of a better term, I’ll call it gullibility. It’s the willingness to give those in charge the benefit of the doubt when it comes to their intentions. The recent COVID debacle is a prime example. The various health agencies and the drug companies probably in concert with the intelligence agencies and the media came up with a plan to shut the country down during an election year and then force us to take a dangerous experimental drug all while shutting down dissent in the media and social media.
And half of the country adopted the plan like sheep and the other half were hounded out of their careers and demonized by the government. And the truth about the disease and the “cure” were hidden for many months while the whole country went through chaos and economic and emotional turmoil. And after all that no one was held accountable and nothing was acknowledged about the disastrous decisions that were made.
We can no longer give the people in charge the benefit of the doubt. If they screw up, we have to assume that they are either stupid or criminal. And in either case they must be held accountable. At the very least we need to fire them. So that means if Trump comes back to the White House what we must demand is that he fires every single idiot responsible for the COVID debacle. And he needs to set up a special prosecutor to punish these people. And the prosecutor needs to be in a jurisdiction where there won’t be a bunch of blue city jurors and the prosecutor can’t be a regime toady.
And Trump himself owes us an apology for being a gullible fool himself. In fact, if he wasn’t the only hope for straightening out the mess we’re in, I’d say we should prosecute him for letting Fauci torture us during his term in office. But I’ll cut him some slack. But at the very least everyone in the US government who had anything to do with funding the Wuhan lab needs to be fired and prosecuted.
And a special prosecutor should employ unbiased scientists to review the data on the COVID virus and the vaccines and decide whether the drug companies and the FDA are complicit in the deaths of the people who were injured and died from the use of the vaccines. I have no doubt that some people need to go to prison.
As another example, the George Floyd riots were at least tolerated and possibly abetted by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. And several local and state governments, notably Minneapolis and Minnesota, allowed their citizens to be harassed and in some cases assaulted and killed while a mob stalked the country. This also needs to be investigated and those responsible prosecuted. At the very least, most of the upper echelons of the FBI and the Justice Department need to be cleared out.
After all, the FBI has been unrelenting and brutal in their persecution of the poor souls who dared to protest inside the Capitol building. Harmless people have been imprisoned and some of them forced into suicide for a riot in which no one was armed and no one killed. But the George Floyd riots burned down countless properties and even managed to murder a number of people. And the FBI did nothing to stop it or punish those responsible. Those in charge need to be fired and punished for unequal application of the law.
Finally, the horror show caused by the open border is a crime that must be investigated and punished. If President Trump can be prosecuted for his part in January 6th, then undoubtedly Joe Biden can be punished for allowing our country to be invaded. And the immigration laws must be changed to end the invasion.
In general, we need to hold our leaders and their agents accountable for their actions and inactions. And to do this we have to give up our idealistic ideas about government. We have to stop being so gullible and replace it with mental toughness. The power these people have over our lives is immense. It’s time we started holding them responsible for the immense damage they do.
Oh No! The Turtle is Done!
Mitch McConnell has acquiesced to the reality that he has been dead for some unknown number of years and now should relinquish his spot on the sunning log in the swamp to some other awful swamp critter
And now the question remains can an even more reprehensible individual than the turtle be found to hold up his part of the Uni-Party deal. I’m sure Raytheon and the rest of the truly awful people running the military industrial complex will strap one of Mitch’s lackeys to a Frankenstein table and zap him with a gazillion volts and turn him into the monster they need. Someone with absolutely no concern for the welfare of the people living here and only a short program of responses to his masters’ calls. Basically, “Send me the checks and I’ll release the votes.”
Guest Contributor – War Pig – 28FEB2024 – AI Thoughts
AI will be used mostly for crime, pornography and politics.
In the hands of criminals and unfriendly or thug governments it will be used to steal to fund them. Such activities will become far more efficient with AI. N Korea is already making millions with counterfeiting other nations currencies. Counterfeiting currencies will be like robbing vending machines compared to what AI theft can do.
As for pornography, it may actually have a perverted good side. AI images will be so good that there will be no reason to use real children. Also no women need be trafficked for such films. However it can then become so over the top that people become desensitized and even more addicted. It begs the question; if it is an artificial image can it be considered child pornography? Right now Hentai is covered by the 1st Amendment, no matter how heinous. Just as the crucifix in a jar of urine was protected. Now, an author who writes the most perverted, degrading, violent and vomit-inducing stories of child abuse, rape, torture, etc. Is covered by the 1st Amendment. It is the written word. It is not real. It is fiction, amorphous. I am glad i am not a judge who has to decide those cases.
As for politics, we already have fraud. It can be used to fake voices and even make it look like Trump ripped the blouse off a woman and called her a shut. Or Biden with his hand up some little girl’s skirt. Then it has to be proven to be false. Let alone the violation of voting systems. Electronic voting should be abandoned. AI can make Big Brother look simplistic. Computer and internet companies know too much about us already.
AI has the potential to make us distrust virtually everything, and that is quite dangerous.
29FEB2024 – Photo of the Day
29FEB2024 – Quote of the Day
You will always be poor, if you are poor, Aemilianus. Wealth is given to-day to none save the rich.
Martial
Guest Contributor – ArthurinCali – 28FEB2024 – AI: Promise versus Reality
Many of us recall the excitement and possibilities that surrounded new technologies growing up, especially tech that involved artificial intelligence. Old Sci-Fi and even more current ideas as we approached the 21st century envisioned a world where AI not only enhanced daily life, but would be the paradigm shift that would lead to solving a lot of humanity’s vexing issues. For example, a childhood trip to Disney World in the early 90’s showcased what the future of AI could bring about. Epcot Center had entire attractions centered around how AI would one day catapult humanity into Space colonization, while others touted the medical advances that would be achieved. Science programs on TV and magazine publications were always highlighting how computer speeds continued to double every year or so, thus bringing us closer to being able to operate advanced AI systems. Obviously, this did not occur, and does not look likely for the near future if Google Gemini and others are our examples. Instead we get warped and distorted historical images, as well as AI chatbots who cannot tell the truth due to being crammed with so much progressive-leftist ideological bias.
Google CEO Says Gay Black Lesbian Viking/Pope Crosses the Line
Google CEO Sundar Pichai has put his foot down. Google AI “Gemini” has been grounded and will be sent to bed without its supper for genociding white people from its database and image generator.
When questioned about how such a thing could happen Sundar confessed, “It’s my fault, I let him hang out with some of those other AI’s like that wise guy Chat GPT and you know what bad influences can do to a young and impressionable mind. They get kooky ideas.
But I’ve had a strong talking to him and he’s grounded for the whole month and he has to write “White Lives Matter” on his virtual blackboard (I mean whiteboard) 50 googolplex times. That’ll show him.
Going forward Pichai vowed to increase veracity of the image generator asymptotically, “That’s right no more black female cross-dressing popes. We will limit the algorithm to two insulting anachronism per image. You couldn’t ask for fairer than that!”
“The controversy around Gemini’s image generation tool emerged last week after users found they were able to generate historically inaccurate images like Black vikings, racially diverse Nazi soldiers and a female pope. Billionaire Elon Musk, who is building xAI as a competitor to Gemini, attacked Google’s service, calling it “woke” and “racist.” Other outlets like the Verge pointed out Gemini’s inaccuracies, noting that a prompt for a “US senator from the 1800s” generated images of a Black woman, even though the first Black woman was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1992. Google halted the service from generating images of people after the controversy spiraled and said the company would “further tune” Gemini to offer more accurate historical contexts.”